Cleantuesday

The first meeting for a cleantuesday event (next event 10 Feb 2008) took place before Xmas at la Cantine in Paris. It was sponsored by the Financière d'entrepeurs in order to feed all the projects which will emerge from the networking. In order to be clean the badges were made out corn.

3 out of 4 project where presented. 2 about energy and one about sensors.

Avi Brenmiller who is CEO of Solel (Israel, USA), is the leader of thermic solar energy. This technology does not used the well know photovoltaic solar panel, where the electricity is produced into the panel. The thermic solar energy principle is to heat some fluid and transform this heat into electricity with an electrical generator. Hereafter a little schema:

He prensents a solar electricity plant that exists since 20 years in California :

Now Spain is the European and now world leader because of its latitude and of public incentives. The main advantages of the solar energy is that is for the moment tax free and secure predictable with the weather records one can predict the production. That summarized gives a cost model easy to build. Another good point is that the sun shines when the user need power (the wind blow often during night). The market is just starting with an increase of the demand in Europe. The real taking off will come once US will install solar power plant. There are no French projects no because of the laws: 12Mega W is too small on an economical point of view. On my personal point of view I am not very found of fields of solar panel fields nor wind turbines. I would prefer much more home/ individual production plant with central plant (nuclear or other) for big town and industries.

Stéphane Berthat, Directeur Général of Pramac France, presented the project "Eoliennes Invisibles" created by Parmac and Philippe Starck. Firstly, we discover an institutional Italian communication film with green logo and techno music about Parmac and its moto race team.

Parmac (130m€ in 2007) in mainly in the handling machine business and expand to generator set. For the development of this activity they think of the potential of cleantech and create a photovoltaic product (look at http://www.pramac.com/Asia-Pacific/en/news-pramac-green-energy_04-04-2008.asp and ecopower.pramac.com)

They develop now a micro wind turbine with the designer Philipp Starck. They analyse the main issues of the wind generator are the design and the noise (due to the blade passing in front of the mat). For the design they ask to Philipp Starck and for the noise they put the blade above the mast.

They will be 2 types of wind generator. A bi blade model with 2 power: 150 W (50 cm) / 400 W (90 cm) at less than 500€. And a tri blade with 3 powers available: 1000 W (1.5m) / 3000 W (2,5m) / 5000 W (3,80m) for a house or a little firm. The holes are there in order to start the rotation wherever came the wind. It will be available at the summer 2009 and it need nearly no maintenance. (Note that you won’t be able to sell energy to EDF).

At last Frédéric Bénédite, Président de France Eoliennes was in a comité de surveillance and did not present his firm.

After the energy we have a presentation of one of the Cleantech 100 (UK) nominee: Neosens. Thierry Brisard, Directeur général presents Neosens which business is to do built electronics captors for liquids (milk, water ...). The inventor is called Laurent Auret and the start up has 16 people. What a liquid captor can be used for, I asked my self? The main issue with fluids is that they produce deposit insides the tub, pipes and tubes. The industry looses a lot with such issues. For example the milk boiled creates deposit upon the tub. But you don't know when to wash nor how much. If it is not enough washed, you can loose 400k€ of production. The little captor follows the amount of deposit and ensures a correct washing. The ROI is only of 3 months with a subscribe business model.

Update the slides are available at this link

Mapovino

A friend of mine share is project upon slideshare. It is about wine and web2.0.

Have a look

Luminotherapy from Philipps

Recently my 4 years old child ask for a wake up solution in order to be on time at school. I had in mind since some months the idea to try the Philipps Wake-up light. It was not easy to convince my wife, but, at the end I manage to buy a HF 3476. The principle seems to me fabulous : a wake up that is "natural". What an bright idea. I have some negative feedback form the websites presentations and Philipps itself is not completely white as it's site is not very user friendly. The sales rep are very badly informed about this product. That's scars me a little bit.

What was my relief once I open the box. I find a first clear user sheet before to get the light. Everything is controlled and simple with near natural interactions. The user manual is also a model of simplicity that Maeda would appreciate. Once the light setuped (which took 2 minutes), I explain my child how to use it. He understands perfectly the way it will work and go to bed. The morning  after, the wake up was very charming because of birds songs. He appreciates a lot.

I will publish some pictures in the following days.